Heating up in Huntsville – the discovery of FHI?

WUWT reader BarryW found this on the Huntsville Office of the State Climatologist, operated by our friend, Dr. John Christy and left it in Tips and Notes. First Christy’s article, then the report on the rabbit hole my investigation sent me into. There goes another afternoon chasing a weather station.

I’m glad I don’t live at the airport

Scientists are puzzling over why temperatures at the Huntsville International Airport are routinely warmer than temperatures in surrounding communities.

During the summer of 2010, daily maximum temps at the airport’s automated weather station averaged more than one degree F warmer than other stations in North Alabama. That included some relatively urban stations, such as the one at UAHuntsville. The airport thermometer has been tested and is accurate, so the question now is whether airport expansion has created an isolated “heat island.” That could mean data from the HIA station is no longer representative of the larger area and has reduced value for tracking both local weather and climate change.

So, the first thing I did was look up some history. It seems the station has been moved around a bit.

Stations used to populate the new database for Huntsville

Madison (014976)

Though observations begin in 1894 at Madison (014976), information from station history files indicate thermometers were mounted on the north side of a residence until probably 1906. In Feb. 1907 the first reference to the use of a cotton region shelter (CRS) is documented, so it was decided that the POR for temperatures should begin at that point. The POR for precipitation will be 1894.

For the most part, all Madison observations were taken in large, rural yards of homes on Church St., with the CRS usually positioned on grass at least 7 to 15 m from any structure. The longest single site was that of the Carter family who observed from 1917 to 1950 from the same location, providing an exceptionally consistent record during the period of significant warm temperature extremes of the 1920’s through the 1940’s. All Madison observations were taken in the evening except for a period in 1911-1914 and 1950-1962.

Huntsville (014068)

Observations of temperature and precipitation began in 1937 for the then small town of Huntsville on the property of the electric utility company (Alabama Power Corp., 1937-1940, Tennessee Valley Authority 1940-1941). All daily summaries from this station are based on midnight observations. The station was moved on 21 Feb. 1941 to a rural crossroads just south of the city limits, being less than 2 km from the original utility company. On 21 Nov. 1945 the site was moved to the Huntsville Municipal Airport, about 6 km south of the original site. All sites appear to be open and unobstructed. The airport station was closed 14 Jul 1954, though indications exist that the weather station was indeed operating for aviation puposes.

Huntsville (014064, KHSV)

The Weather Bureau commissioned a station at the Huntsville Municipal Airport in 1958 on the same site as the previous station. It was moved short distances in late 1958 and 1964. On 29 Oct 1967, the station was moved 17 km WSW to the new Huntsville-Decatur International Airport where observations continue to this day. The most significant event since 1967 was the commissioning of the ASOS in 1994 at its new location over 1 km W of the airport offices.

Period of Record
The Madison stations (014976) were all located at a distance of about 6.5 km and within an elevation of 20 m of the current KHSV ASOS. Indeed, the comment made on WS Form B-44 regarding the closure of Madison when the latest observer died was “This station located [near the] WSO/Huntsville. Station no longer needed.” Thus, geographically, the Madison stations would be viewed as compatible and consistent with KHSV.

The early Huntsville stations of 1937-1945 (014068) were located about 20 km NE of the present KHSV ASOS before moving to the Municipal Airport in 1945 at 18.1 km ENE from the ASOS. The entire set of 014068 stations taking observations during 1937-1954 were compatible and consistent as indicated by a single station ID and that their largest separation was less than 7 km. The fact the newly commissioned Weather Bureau station (014064) began operation on the same site as the final station of 014068, certainly makes it compatible with 014068. All 014064 and 014068 stations were within 15 m elevation of the present ASOS.

The 1967 move from the Municipal Airport to the new airport was significant (17 km), however with virtually no change in elevation, latitude or surrounding topography, the 014064 stations could be considered as a set of continuous records.

NWS Huntsville History (click on the images for annotated enlargements)

The history of weather observing in Huntsville dates back to the some of the city’s earliest years of existence. The earliest documented observations began in January of 1831 at an unknown location in the city and continued to be taken until December of 1839. Observations briefly resumed at another unknown location in June of 1871. These lasted only until August 31, 1877.

Steady observations in the Huntsville-Madison County area didn’t begin until 1894, when a cooperative observing site was established in Madison. The thermometer at this site was situated on the north side of the porch, so the readings were probably unreliable. However, precipitation data recorded at this station was considered valid, and it is a part of the climatological record. In 1907, the site was moved to the Klish residence. This station was equipped with a Stevenson Screen enclosure for the thermometer. The station moved again several times – in 1911, three times in 1912, in 1916, and in 1917 – all to locations in the same vicinity. Over this time period L.S. Hagar, R.A. Patton, J.B. Stevenson, Edward Humphrey, S. Fletcher Bradley, and James Landers were listed as observers.

On March 19, 1917, Mr. Thomas Carter, who lived on Church Street a quarter mile south of the Madison Post Office, took over official observations. This site continued to operate until observations resumed in the city of Huntsville in 1937. Mr. Carter’s nearly continuous daily evening observations spanned some of the hottest months in the history of the state, including the summer of 1925. In September of that year, the high temperature was 100 or greater on 12 days! The hottest day was the 7th, when the temperature reached a balmy 108 degrees. The Carter family continued taking observations in the Madison area until April of 1950.

Observations Begin in Huntsville

On January 1, 1937, observations resumed in Huntsville at the Alabama Power Company building. This station was located less than a mile southwest of the post office on Canal Street. In 1940, utility operations in Huntsville were bought by the city and contracted to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Observations continued at the same location until February 21, 1941. As a part of a significant road renaming project in Huntsville in 1958, Canal Street became part of Lehman Ferry Road, which was later renamed Leeman Ferry Road. Most of former Canal Street no longer exists, but part of it still does and is now known as Woodson Street. The old TVA building still stands there near the intersection of Clinton Avenue.

At this point, the site was moved to a Texaco Station owned by Mr. Joe E. Cambron. The station was near the intersection of US Highway 241 and state highway 38. (Neither of those highway numbers are used today. US 241 followed what is now Meridian Street north out of Huntsville and what is now US 431 over Monte Sano. State Highway 38 followed what is now Whitesburg Drive and U.S. 231 toward the Tennessee River). According to Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, there is now a Taco Bell where the Texaco station used to be. This would place the station near the present-day intersection of Whitesburg Drive and Longwood Drive. This station took 24 hour readings until November 21, 1945, when observing responsibilities were shifted to the Huntsville Municipal Airport.

In 1941, weather observing equipment was installed at the new Huntsville Municipal Airport (now known by many locals as the “old airport”), which was located on the south side of town. A survey of the placement of the equipment was completed by a local engineer named Carl T. Jones (whose namesakes include “Carl T Jones Drive” and “Jones Field” in Huntsville). It wasn’t until November of 1945 when this site became the official Huntsville observing site. It was classified at the time as a “Synoptic and Aviation Reports” (SA) station. According to a Weather Bureau Station Record document dated April 15, 1946, airways observations were transmitted via P.C.A. teletype to Chattanooga and 6-hourly observations were called long-distance to the Weather Bureau Airport Station (WBAS) in Chattanooga. Some of the observers at the Huntsville Municipal Airport during this time period were Harold Hudson, James Hudson, and Bud Cramer, Sr., father of the future United States Representative for Alabama’s 5th district.

The weather station at the Huntsville Municipal Airport ceased operations on July 15, 1954. At this point, the station became classified as a Supplementary Airways Reporting Station (SAWRS). However, there are many records that indicate the weather equipment was still functional and used for aviation purposes. Also during this “dark period”, some of the observing equipment was moved to a newly-constructed tower cabin at the airport. When this move was made on August 16, 1957, the station was reclassified as a Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) station. Because observations from this time period do not exist for Huntsville, data from Mr. Harry R. Taylor’s cooperative weather station in Madison (no more than a couple miles from the stations used in the late 1800s and early 1900s) are used as Huntsville’s official readings during this time.

Huntsville’s First Permanent Office

Prior to the establishment of Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville was only a small textile and farming town. This changed rapidly in the 1940s and 1950s, when the military base came to town. Along with the influx of new jobs came new people and increased air traffic. At this point it was decided that Huntsville would receive its own Weather Bureau office. The office was originally scheduled to open on October 1, 1958, however, the new building had not yet been completed by then. The new office was in a building that was part Weather Bureau office, part hangar. According to a Huntsville Times article from October 1, the office’s new staff used the tower of the airport terminal as temporary quarters, where they began limited operations before the official opening of the office by the end of the month. Hubert Bagley (more notoriously known in the Huntsville area as the late H.D. Bagley) was charged with coordinating the construction of the new office and installation of new equipment, such as teletype machines and communication lines. The office’s first Meteorologist-In-Charge (MIC) was Baker B. Williams, who transferred from WBAS Okalahoma City. He was accompanied by a staff of seven others including Bagley, Wilburn K. Cobb, James J. Corcoran, Alfred Eisgrau, Lacy B. Padgett, Anthony M. Smith, and John W. Taylor. The office was equipped with a 44 foot tall WSR-3 radar, which had a range of up to 200 miles (though it wouldn’t have been very effective at longest distances in that range). The new office’s area of responsibility was “Huntsville and a 25-mile-radius including Redstone Arsenal” when it first opened, according to a Times article dated October 31, 1958. At first, forecasts for the Huntsville area originated from the district forecast center at the U.S. Weather Bureau in New Orleans and were refined by the Weather Bureau office in Birmingham. For a short period thereafter, Alabama fell under the district forecast center in Atlanta, but Birmingham still had the responsibility of touching up the local forecast. Surrounding WBAS offices were located in Birmingham, Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga, and Atlanta at that time.

The Weather Bureau office continued operations in the 1960s at the Huntsville Municipal Airport, which was renamed the Huntsville-Madison County Airport. On July 13, 1965 Congress passed President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1965,” which combined the Weather Bureau, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Central Radio Propagation Laboratory to form the new Environmental Science Services Administration (ESSA). The ESSA was still under the Department of Commerce, and the purpose of the U.S. Weather Bureau was not changed.

Same Office, New Location; Then, New Name

As Huntsville continued to grow, so did the need for a larger airport to faciliate the increased amount of air traffic in and out of the city. In 1967, a new Huntsville-Madison County Airport was opened in far southwest Madison County. The Weather Bureau moved along with the airport, and began operations at the new location on October 29, 1967 – almost exactly nine years to the day it began operations in Huntsville. Mr. Williams was still in charge of the office at the time of the move.

In 1969, the Weather Bureau transitioned to the concept of there being a forecasting office for each state, rather than one district office forecasting for several states. Birmingham became the state forecast office for Alabama and portions of the western Florida Panhandle. While the Huntsville office did not produce any forecasts from scratch, the local office did have authorization to make adjustments to the first period of the local forecast as needed.

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The article on the state climo office website says they checked out the sensors, and that they were OK but wondered ‘…so the question now is whether airport expansion has created an isolated “heat island.”‘

I figured this should be easy to figure out looking at timeline imagery in Google Earth, which would show the change in the airport surroundings. So, I set out to locate the ASOS station. My first visit is to NCDC’s metadatabase (MMS).

I thought it was curious that the Google Earth map and the Bing Map images both showed a brown field surrounding the ASOS little sea of grass. This was farmland according to the NCDC metadata, so surely it must be in use?

I figured I’d see seasonal differences in the farmland once I used the Google Earth timeline feature to look at older aerial photos. Surprisingly, I didn’t find this to be the case, here’s a couple others:

I noticed that most of the new airport development in the last ten years was on the east side of the airport, over a mile away from the ASOS. The area around the ASOS seems to have had little developmental change.

But, I thought it odd that every photo I looked at had that tiny little island of green surrounded by the sea of brown. I was beginning to wonder if the field was fallow. Even it it was, we should see some weeds turning green in the spring like we see on the right side of the photo. It was also possible these images caught the field just before planting (freshly tilled) and after harvest, in which case both would be brown.

So I decided to look at zoomed in view to determine if the field was being worked.

I found evidence of change from 2007 to 2010, looking at the till or mow lines (I couldn’t tell which) but I also got the distinct impression that in the 9-05-2010 image, the field was fallow, due to the incursion of what looks like bushes in the right side of the image, along with what looks like a flat area, with till line erasure, likely due to mud settling in a low area that collected spring rains. My impression is that the field was fallow in the summer of 2010, with the brown albedo surrounding the Huntsville ASOS station throughout the entire summer.

I was surprised to find that the area around the ASOS station was brown as well. Unfortunately, I have no way to tell what the date of the image is, since Google does not provide image dating for street view (that I can find). But it sure looks to me like a plowed field left fallow. I know that the Google Earth Street View feature was launched on May 25, 2007, and didn’t get full coverage for a couple of years after that…so I know the image is somewhere less than 5 years old. Given the color of the grass along the roadway, I’m guessing wintertime.

But, it seems clear that this field is not being worked, and the settled area and bush incursion in the late summer 2010 closeup image above suggest it was fallow during the summer of 2010…when the discrepancy with other nearby stations was noticed.

I think the discrepancy was due to soil albedo. As any glider pilot can tell you, a freshly plowed field generates a lot of heat (and a big updraft).

This table of soil albedo tells the story.

In the table above, lower values absorb more incoming solar energy, and thus release more LWIR at night as well.

This image from 2010, suggests a moist, wetter, darker soil, one of the lowest albedo values in the table above. The green grass suggests summer.

The Google Earth view shows the ASOS behind the airport fence, so I’m guess that in order to till and plant the field, some notice of access is required to the airport authority. I’m thinking that all Dr. John Christy has to do now to confirm my theory is to ask the airport authority if they can provide status of mowing/weed control/tilling or other activity in that filed and we’ll have our answer about why the summer of 2010 was so different at the airport, even though the sensors check out.

We may have a case of a “Farming Heat Island” – FHI.

Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has been suggesting that land cover/land use change has a big of an impact as CO2 driven change if not more, I think here we have a prime example of this.

If anyone lives in/near Huntsville, a photo from that location on the road west of the runway (County Line Road) to tell us if the field is being worked would be helpful, but be mindful of airport security when taking photos.

I know you’re the expert and I’m not. This is just a suggestion from a “newbie” and a “layman”. Would it be possible or practical to have some way to determine a range within which these staions’ readings can be trusted? Perhaps a set of 4 or 5 mobile units, each having the same equipment, that would set up around a station. One at the station itself and the others a distance away but surrounding it. After a period of time compare the station’s readings with all the units’ readings and determine a range within which a particular station’s readings cna be trusted. I know people are used to hearing “the temperature is 68” rather than “the temperature between 66 and 70” or “the temperature is 68 plus or minus 2%” but it would be more accurate. It just seems like using a range to record temperatures at questionable sites would be cheaper and more feasible than replacing them. Maybe this was a dumb question but someone once told me that the only dumb question is the one you don’t ask.

The 1967 move from the Municipal Airport to the new airport was significant (17 km), however with virtually no change in elevation, latitude or surrounding topography, the 014064 stations could be considered as a set of continuous records.

I lived in Huntsville for 20 years and this statement is not correct.

The old airport is/was just south of Airport Drive and within about 2 miles of the Monte Sano mountain, which is over 1000 feet above the surrounding terrain. The old airport is several miles, about 8-10 from the Tennessee river as well. The air circulation in that older area is much better than out at the new airport in Madison.

The new airport was carved out of cotton fields and cotton fields still surround the airport on the west side. Development has covered most of the east side and Boeing has a huge facility to the south of the airport. The fields that you see are Cotton fields and they are still used during the summer but they use herbicides to kill any grass that may encroach. I don’t know if it is tilled every year but most years that I lived there it was.

Another thing is that the new station is within about two miles of Wheeler lake on the Tennessee river and the humidity out there is always much higher than at the old site.

It would be far more useful to set an array of instruments across a 500 x 500 mile or 1000 mile x 1000 mile region with sites at every 50 mile (25 miles ?) spacing at “ideal” spots – regardless of population or assumed “light density” or older stations locations. You’d spread the new array across older stations at various distances and directions of course, but after 2 years of 24-hour a day (with no TOBS-adjusted bullshitte added or subtracted, you’d be able to justify – or falsify – Hansen’s 0.50 1988-assumed 1200 kn smoothing of data across unmeasured spaces.

Leave the automatic “perfect array” in position for 1 year and you’d be able to calibrate (correctly!) ANY satellite reading or proxy for that entire array area.

Leave it in place for 4 years and you’d would be able to void/verify ALL assumed trends from old stations being corrupted. The longer the better.

[And, since NOBODY can claim temperatures now (this past 1-1/2 decade) are increasing, we have lost no “time” against the assumed fight against CAGW by building the wide array “perfect array” of new sensors. /sarchasm – that gaping whole between a socialist and reality. ]

Either the “real stations” would be trending day-by-day and night-by-night with the changes in the “original stations” that Hansen is extrapolating between, or they would not be. Either the UHI would be verified hour-by-hour as the wind changed in various directions around the “original stations” and the “ideal array stations” … or it would not.

Either UHI would be verified as being 3, 4, 5 or 8 degrees and depend on population, or depend on light, or depend on extreme location-specific changes (asphalt, buildings, walls and pipes), or be “zero” if winds are above 5 knots, or it would not.

I was young during the “ice age” scare of the late 70’s.
Our gang would shovel a driveway in 10 minutes, for $15-20.
The hockey rink seemed to always have ice, it was the best of times.
We were young.
—-
Now, warmth is a sin in need of taxation.

I’ll see if I can get a picture. I’m within a couple miles of the airport on most mornings. Kind of worried about the security issues though. They really don’t like people stopping and taking pictures near the runways. A friend of mine is a customs agent at Hsv International. It is possible he knows more about the field usage. I’m fairly certain the field around the station hasn’t had any crops since at least 2001… probably longer than that. The station is inside a perimeter fence surrounding the airport. Just don’t see how the airport security hassles would be worth farming the land. There’s plenty of farmland available in the area that is a lot easier to access. I could be wrong though.
What puzzles me is that the ground aquires vegetation around here if it sits for too long. Usually grass or weeds will grow and it will look similar to the green areas closer to the airport. It appears that somebody is intentionally plowing the land even if nothing is being planted. Seems like an odd thing to do.

Anthony, I may be able to provide you with a contact who has lived in Huntsville all his life. He is an environmental/safety specialist who works for the company from which I retired. Please email me if you are interested in contacting him.

I think what you are looking at is ‘weed abatement’. San Jose Airport also often has that brown look.

Birds are A Bad Thing at airports and lots of strategies are tried to keep them away. Having no vegetation to hide in and nothing to eat helps. Don’t know if that is part of the rational for it, or just not liking to mow all the time, but keeping the dirt dirt, and not green growing stuff, is common.

This is for once a year vegetation control at the Kansas City International Airport (MCI), 4 International Square, Kansas City, MO 64153 System Support Center and outlying facilities. This consists of approximately 523,250 square feet of area for MCI.

Weed control is required to eliminate seasonal weeds. Re-treatments will be made at no additional charge.

All herbicides will be EPA approved, safe and non-toxic to mammals, non-corrosive, and nonflammable. All personnel who apply herbicides will be state trained and licensed. Work shall include labor, equipment, chemicals, insurance, state and local licensing.

IIRC, there’s about 44,000 sq ft per acre, so that’s about 10 acres of dead zone. Around that will be tarmac / asphalt for both parking areas and taxiways, concrete for runways, gravel or composition roofing on buildings, and thousands of pounds of painted metal (some moving, some not). Plus many tons of fuel burned per hour.

Stuck close to the middle of it, as near to the runway as can be done while not being a flight hazard, will be the thermometer. It has as its primary purpose reporting the hottest temperature an airplane is likely to experience over the concrete of the runway. (“Density Altitude” determines if you can fly or not and you do NOT want a ‘false low’ reading or things get broken.)

Airports are singularly wrong for any study of “climate change”.

Also, I have no idea if they intend this detail to be widely published, but it is visible on the internet:

has a log of mechanical weed control at an airport. Don’t know if it is real, or not, but even if it is just an example, they clearly intend the use of tractors and weed whacking to keep things brown and not green.

I suspect you will find a lot of that at airports.

FWIW a friend / pilot once nearly planted his plane into a very nice dark ploughed strip at a local airport. It was parallel with the runway and dark enough to be attractive. At the last minute he realized his error and pulled up, barely touching the dirt. After landing on the correct bit, he was informed that such happened fairly often. They kept that bit ploughed to prevent weeds and such.

IMHO the bulk of all the warming found in the land record is due to the recent data being almost universally from airports, near the runway, and surrounded by dead dark surfaces. What AGW has found is that airports have grown from grass fields in 1914 to tarmac jungles in urban areas in 2012 and the arrival of the Jet Age. Nothing more.

I asked my customs agent friend about the area. He was pretty sure the area was being farmed and that there was currently corn growing there. So, I figured a drive-by would confirm that quickly. When I got there, the west side of County Line rd. (not inside airport perimeter) had plenty of lush corn growing. The east side (inside the airport perimeter) was all plowed dirt. If they were farming it, there should be something growing right now. I took a couple pictures. Let me know how to send them if you want them.

What puzzles me is that the ground aquires vegetation around here if it sits for too long. Usually grass or weeds will grow and it will look similar to the green areas closer to the airport. It appears that somebody is intentionally plowing the land even if nothing is being planted. Seems like an odd thing to do.

No vegetation means no wildlife. A single bird can destroy a jet engine. There’s a video showing this happening to a 757 on YouTube. At first the controller says that all runways are available for the plane to return. Later on the crew is told that the runway they took off from is now closed due pieces of dead bird and jet engine.

As Steveta and EM Smith have stated ASOS/METARS records are an FAA service for pilots. Considering any ASOS site as representative for local climate as opposed to providing airport specific temperature information pilots need to compute runway distances, max safe load etc as well as pressure data to calibrate the altimeters.

I’m sorry for the late comment, but I was out of the country last week. I’m very familiar with this field and this instrument site as it is along one of my favorite cycling routes. (We frequently get south winds here so I can bomb north on County Line road at 26-29 mph, which can old guy like me can’t normally do.)

While I’ve never paid close attention to the rotation of crops in this field, I do frequently notice this field and the instrument site. The field is notable because it is inside the perimeter of the airport and there is no separation from the western runway. I often wonder what agreement or clearance the farmer has to be allowed to work inside the perimeter fence of a working airport. The instrument site is notable to me after having followed Watts up with That and the Surface Stations project for quite a few years.

The point of my comment is that this is an active cotton field. I would chalk the appearance of an unworked field up to coincidence. All of the photos seems to have been taken in winter or spring. You can see that the bermuda grass surrounding the field is still dormant. I know that there is also green grass around, but it is common to have stretches of crabgrass and/or fescue, neither of which is dormant during winter.

Most cotton fields in our area are left fallow during the winter and the cotton plants do not show until well into the growing season. Some fields are planted with red clover during the late winter to bloom in April, but I’ve never seen this field with red clover (and, believe me, that is a beautiful site and quite notable). If a cotton farmer employs any rotation strategy, it will generally be corn. This is an example of a typical Tennesse Valley cotton field.

II’ll probably ride this route tomorrow after work and I’ll pay close attention to make sure I’m not off base. If you’d like any photos, let me know and I can take my camera along. However, even though there is a farmer who is allowed to to circumnavigate the site on his tractor, I would not be able to breach the perimeter fence along County Line Road. The only directions from which I could view the site would be SW, W, and NW.